Andy Nghiem recently reported on New Mexico State Representative Javier Martinez' flirtation with socialism in his support for guaranteeing basic family incomes to "lift poor families out of poverty." For a brief moment I thought that I must be reading an old story about 1960s Cuba or maybe 1970s Venezuela or perhaps some other Marxist country, but no, it was actually a real proposal to fix New Mexico's poverty by locking people in a government dependency relationship.
Martinez obviously hasn't lived in a socialist country or visited ones like I have and seen with his own eyes how human beings' loss of their dignity and self-respect can cripple them, the same way an uninterrupted stream of welfare checks can turn people into wards of the state that wait by their mailboxes for relief instead of looking for work.
This is the point when hair-shirt Liberals will chime in and say, "But there are no jobs for these people to get!" OK, I'll grant them that. Our unemployment rate is the second-highest in the country (over 7.6%) while the national average is somewhere around 6%, but what is even more devastating is the number of long-term unemployed New Mexicans who've basically given up looking for work! THAT'S where we need to focus our compassion if it's compassion that Democrat legislator Martinez is trying to sell with his support for a guaranteed income.
But back to socialism for a minute. I lived in several countries which were quasi-socialist in nature (Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany and Singapore). All had established safety nets for their unemployed or chronically poor and ALL had mandatory re-training or vocational education programs which kicked in just before the benefits ran out so as to give their disadvantaged citizens a leg up instead of a hand out. I also worked in the former Soviet Union back in the '70s and saw what their citizens gave up in exchange for a few guarantees of food and shelter. Believe me, the Soviet model wasn't a pretty sight and it was not something that is sustainable over time as the Russians found out.
Education and re-training (and plenty of job opportunities) are much better solutions to poverty. The Chinese may be wrong on a lot of things, but one bit of Chinese wisdom rings true…"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." People like prominent tech entrepreneur and former candidate for President (and former candidate for NYC Mayor) Andrew Yang was hawking a national guaranteed income in his Presidential campaign back in 2020 and it did get some attention, but largely among idealists like I suspect Representative Martinez is. But thinking with one's head is always preferable to acting solely with one's heart.
I would respectfully suggest that instead of finding new ways to spend New Mexico's few tax dollars on giveaway programs that Mr. Martinez use his energy and his clout to encourage his fellow Democrat legislators to support new job creation and the small businesses that ultimately end up creating them. That's a guaranteed OUTCOME we could all get behind.